


Even White Teeth

by Basingstoke



Category: The Sandman, The X-Files
Genre: Crossover, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-08-05
Updated: 2000-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>One thousand thanks to Velma Doo for the beta.</p><p><i>All quotes are from <span class="u">Fight Club</span> by Chuck Palahniuk. </i></p><p> </p><p><i>Warning: the quotes spoil elements of the book.</i></p>
    </blockquote>





	Even White Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> One thousand thanks to Velma Doo for the beta.
> 
> _All quotes are from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. _
> 
>  
> 
> _Warning: the quotes spoil elements of the book._

_Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast.  To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes.  This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound. _

 

_You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand._

Krycek ran from an invisible pursuer. 

The path wound through a strangely familiar pine forest.  The snow-caked trees were tall as the sky; the stars were as bright as the sun; but the ground was dark, so dark his legs disappeared into the shadows. 

He heard the terrifying steps behind him, sometimes in sync, sometimes close, sometimes faded.  His breath plumed in the frigid air and his hands and feet grew numb, but there was no time to stop.  He had to keep running.

He jumped over rocks and tree branches with enormous leaps, but the pursuing steps kept up.  Sometimes near, sometimes far, never gone.

The trees spilled over with the ticker-tape tinsel of whispered secrets; and with that, he realized it was a dream and woke up.

Krycek grabbed the gun off the nightstand as he rolled over, pointing the gun at the door.  He listened intently to the shadows before he realized he was alone in the room and the shock was left over from the dream.  The motel room was silent in the midnight chill. 

Christ, this room looked like the silo.  The grimy window looked straight into a cement wall.  No wonder he was having running dreams. 

Krycek turned on the bedside lamp and opened his book again; no point in sleeping if he was going to have nightmares.  He rubbed his hands as he read but they refused to warm.

* * *

_Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive. A lot of folks mix their nitro with cotton and add Epsom salts as a sulfate. This works too.  Some folks, they use paraffin mixed with nitro. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me._

That day they bought detonation cord and Krycek filched the receipt for Mulder.

They loaded the cord into the back of the pickup truck and headed back to the Wyoming base.  His companion drove.  Krycek read more, sipping coffee slowly to stay awake.   Brothers in arms they might be but friends they were not.  Krycek wasn't about to sleep in his presence.

Krycek looked up from his book and found himself in the forest again, with the threatening footsteps loud in his ears.  He dropped the book and took off running. 

He could feel the breath on the back of his neck as the forest grew colder and colder, until his feet were numb and stumbling as he ran and his hands were red even tucked up by his body.  The breath felt like a blowtorch panting against his neck.  Strange foot steps echoing behind him stride for stride.  When the breath blew out it burned, but he craved the burn, because the forest was so cold.

The trees stretched up taller around him and Krycek suddenly realized it was a dream. 

He woke with a jerk, slapping his hand over his weapon automatically.  The book slid off his lap and landed askew on his boot.  He blinked and rubbed his cold hands.  It was 1AM, which meant they would be back at the compound before too long.  Time to get a grip.

The driver glanced at him.  Krycek glared back and picked up his book. 

"Losing your edge, Arntzen?"

Krycek pulled his eyes from his book and his knife from his jacket in the same move.  He pressed the blade up against the driver's neck and the truck swerved as the man flinched away.

"I haven't lost my edge.  Where exactly did you want it?"

The driver met his eyes angrily, straightening out the truck. "Back in your pants."

Krycek smirked and drew back.  He propped one boot on the dashboard and went back to his book.

* * *

_Arson meets on Monday. _

 

_Assault on Tuesday._

 

_Mischief meets on Wednesday._

 

_And Misinformation meets on Thursday._

 

_Organized Chaos.  The Bureaucracy of Anarchy.  You figure it out._

They delivered the cord to the boom-boom boys and went to bed. Krycek sealed the receipt into an envelope to be mailed at the next opportunity.

Too fucking easy.  He couldn't imagine how these cretins had gotten so far, or how they expected to get away with it.  He would wrap them up in a shiny red ribbon for Mulder, and then, well, Mulder would be in his debt, and that was an interesting position indeed. 

Krycek slid the homemade lock onto the door and went to sleep. He thought of busty librarians and Mulder in red Speedos to ensure good dreams.

His hands were so cold, piercingly cold.  He wrapped his arms around himself and fell to his knees in the soft pine needles. 

The trees shed long, ghostly strands of printed tape with their needles; it floated between the branches and the earth.  His hands leeched the warmth from his ribs so he buried them under the needles instead. But the ground was even colder, and his hands had no feeling at all. He tried to pull them away but they were stuck.  His elbows locked in place. 

"scully is a problem," read one tape.  "take care of bill mulder," read another.

Then the breath came back.  Panting a line up his spine, hot-cold, hot-cold, until it rested at the back of his neck again. 

A phantom tongue swiped the back of his skull and Krycek woke up, gasping into the early morning blankness.

His hands were freezing cold.  He brought them to his mouth, breathing into cupped palms.  Metaphorical dreams, Krycek thought.  Did this mean he had hidden guilt?

Krycek tucked his hands under his jacket between ribs and weapons and stared at the ceiling.  He thought about the future and wondered what Mulder was doing.  He was cut off from his surveillance sources; for all he knew he was sending receipts to a dead man.  But he had to trust in Mulder's search for truth, or there wasn't anything to trust in at all.

He didn't sleep again that night.

* * *

_You can swallow about a pint of blood before you're sick. _

 

_Fight club is tomorrow, and I'm not going to miss fight club._

They buried two child-soldiers who didn't know to take cover from a Wyoming snowstorm and froze to death one hundred feet from the compound. 

Krycek took the match from the other shovel man and lit his cigarette. They stood close together in the lee of a tree, not speaking, smoke and breath mingling.  The other shovel man looked just like Krycek, in cropped hair and blue jeans, black gloves and boots.  He leaned tranquilly on his shovel. 

Krycek stared down into the trench, thinking about aliens.  He wondered if the black oil left anything behind apart from those turbo-powered antibodies.  He could be as sterile as Scully, as poisoned as the smoker, as tampered with as Mulder.

He hated aliens.  And looking at the fresh-faced, neatly-groomed, bright-eyed homicidal racist standing beside him, he hated humans too. 

The other shovel man sighed, snuffing his butt against the bark. Krycek followed and they finished filling in the grave.

* * *

_Three weeks and I hadn't slept.  Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body experience.  My doctor said, "Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger.  Find out what's actually wrong.  Listen to your body."_

The Wyoming compound was being dismantled.  The militia was scattering; some to North Dakota, some to Montana, some to New York. 

Krycek made sure he was going to New York.  He was staying with the bombs.

The receipts had been mailed to Mulder.  Things were coming to a head.  For now, though, he was stuck on a musty mattress in the back of a fifteen year old van with six other tired, dirty men. Everything he owned was in a knapsack under his head. 

He took a chance and closed his eyes.

The forest again, and he struggled to free himself from the earth gripping his hands.

He was tired, so tired.

He was frozen to the ground and now the breath was roaming over his body.  Hands were hot on his scalp, pushing his head from side to side.  Fingers crept into his eyes and pressed his eyelids down as a mouth worked its way up the back of his skull.

He thrashed, trying to free himself, and woke up.

It was night still, or maybe it was very early morning.  He couldn't even tell any more.  The others were asleep--at least his weird dreams were inconspicuous.   God, he had to sleep.  Tomorrow was too important.  Krycek pushed his face into the clean canvas smell of the knapsack, wrapped his arm around his head and tried not to dream. 

The forest was deathly silent.  The smell of cotton and leather mixed with pine and cold.  Krycek was kneeling, his hands hanging limp at his sides and his face pressed to somebody's stomach. 

A cotton t-shirt was soft against his cheek, a leather biker jacket brushing against his nose, a button-fly digging into his chin.  It felt like himself--almost.  But there was no underlying smell of the body and the heat radiating through the clothing didn't feel like body heat at all.  It was much more like flame.

A hand cradled the other side of his face.  The thumb stroked circles on his eyelid.  Sometimes feather-light, sometimes dragging like an eraser over a desktop.  Lights danced in his vision when it pressed his cornea. 

Krycek grabbed the wrist and opened his eyes.  He pushed away, back on his heels.  The thin man looked down at him with mirror-shaded eyes.  His white-blond hair flopped over his forehead. 

"Are you me?" Krycek asked.

"No," the man said.

"What are you?"

"A nightmare."

That made sense.  It was a nightmare, plain and simple, not some twisted bugbear of his subconscious.

The thin man smiled, and the smile lasted until Krycek woke up.

* * *

_The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club...._

 

_The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club._

They were all punchy by the time they reached New York, smoking cigarettes and avoiding each others' eyes.  The chief was on the phone coordinating their entrance.  The truck followed. 

Krycek stared out the window wondering how quickly Mulder had put it all together.

They stopped outside the city limits.  The van was abandoned. The chief put Krycek shotgun in the truck and himself and the others in the back.  That could mean a lot of things, like maybe that the chief was going to have him killed soon; but Krycek didn't really give a fuck because Mulder had the last of the receipts now, and the fun was about to start.

It was very early; the site was silent in the velvet black of pre-dawn. "Back up to the warehouse," the chief said. 

They disembarked and were preparing to unload the truck when the place exploded.  FBI agents, SWAT teams, tear gas and chaos. 

The others were stuck in the warehouse.  The truck driver looked at his exposed position and took off, Krycek hanging on for the ride.

"Why the fuck are you laughing?" the driver shouted.

"No reason," Krycek said, and shot him in the head. 

The truck swerved.  He stomped on the brakes with his left foot and waited for his favorite FBI agents. 

"Federal agent, I'm armed!  Exit the vehicle, now!"

He had to laugh, the voice was so familiar. 

"Get out of the truck.  Get out of the truck!"

Krycek threw the gun out the window.  A peace offering. 

"Let me see your hands! Hands in the air!"  Oh well.  He slowly got out of the truck anyway, hands raised. 

There was Mulder, looking butch in riot gear.  Krycek saw the recognition pass over Mulder's face, followed closely by fury.

"You son of a bitch!"

Mulder hit him in the stomach with the butt of the gun, sending him sprawling in the mud.  Ouch.

"Mulder!"  Scully, always the voice of rationality.

"I handed you this bust, Mulder!" he shouted.

"Oh, come on, Krycek!"

"Who do you think sent you those receipts?"

Just like that he had them.  Then it was time to cough up some information:  bombs, secrets, and interesting couriers at the airport.

* * *

_To Marla I'm a fake.  Since the second night I saw her, I can't sleep._

Krycek had always liked Scully.  He almost felt bad about his part in her abduction.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

"What?"

Scully never took any crap from Mulder.  Krycek hadn't had time to figure out how she kept her hand on his leash so effectively.

"Show him."

"What is it?"

"Expose it for him, Scully."

Even the Consortium heads who kidnapped and foiled her also respected her. 

"What did you get for Halloween, Charlie Brown?"

And to top it off, Scully had a hell of a right cross.

* * *

_I breathe with my mouth open and say, nitroglycerin._

 

_Tyler licks his lips wet and shining and kisses the back of my hand._

 

_"You can mix the nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite," Tyler says._

 

_The kiss shines wet on the back of my white hand._

Krycek leaned against the elevator wall, functioning on adrenaline alone. His stomach hurt where Mulder had clubbed him with the rifle and his jaw ached from Scully's punch.  Miscalculation; he forgot how much Mulder liked to hit.  He hadn't expected the black rock either.  He had thought the pouch held something more mundane.  Well, he could roll with that.  If Mulder followed the pouch to its source, then some interesting possibilities arose.

Mulder grinned at him with even white teeth.  Krycek didn't bother asking what was so funny.

The elevator opened and Mulder grabbed him by the sleeve, tugging him down the corridor and planting him by a door, out of the line of sight of the person who answered.  Mulder rang the bell and waited. 

"Who is it?"  The voice was familiar.  Krycek's stomach sank.

"I need to speak with you, sir."

The door opened and Krycek didn't need to look. 

"What do you want, Agent Mulder?"

"I need your authorization to provide a safe house."

"A safe house for whom?"

Mulder grabbed his collar and dragged him into the doorway.  Skinner stood there shirtless, staring at him as if he were dirt.

"This man has information about extreme-right militia that could save the lives of innocent Americans."

Krycek's eyes flickered over Skinner.  Nice chest.  He smiled a little, ducking his head, playing sub.

"He'll be safe here," Skinner said. 

Mulder pushed him into the apartment.  Krycek scanned the room, curious to see what Skinner called home. 

A flash of movement was his only warning before Skinner drove his fist into Krycek's stomach.  "Relatively safe," Skinner growled as Krycek gasped.  "We're not even yet, boy.  That's a start."

Skinner hauled him doubled over across the room, out on the balcony into the cold cold midnight air, and Krycek felt the chill bite through the cuffs as he fell to the tile floor.  Skinner threw him against the railing and unfastened the cuffs, chaining him to the rail, and Krycek panicked.  "You can't -- you can't leave me out here, I'm going to freeze to death!"

Skinner pushed him down.  "Just think warm thoughts."

The door slid shut.  The cuffs were solid and icy cold around his wrist.  Krycek ripped his hat off, staring at the door, wondering what came next, trying to calm down and stay awake.  Fuck!  Couldn't he ever sleep somewhere warm?

Eventually the lights went out.  Skinner left him.  Just left him.  In forty-degree weather.  Wasn't there some kind of law against that?  He put his hat back on, biting his collar to keep his teeth from chattering.

A warm hand curled around his wrist as he knelt in the dry leaves. The air was crisp and green.  He breathed deeply, clearing the smoggy Washington air from his lungs.  "Why are you so nice to me?" he asked the thin man.

"I'm not."

"It feels nice."

"You're cold.  Warmth always feels nice."

"Oh," he said, and leaned his head back against the thin man's stomach. The thin man took his other hand as well, rubbing the wrists with a possessive touch.

"Warmth is seductive," the thin man said, his mouth unmoving. "And like all seducers, it betrays you."

"I'm used to betrayal."

"This won't surprise you, then."  The thin man knelt behind Krycek, pressing his mouth to the back of his shorn head in a manner that wasn't a kiss.

Alex jerked awake to see the balcony door opening.  It wasn't yet dawn, maybe six a.m. 

Skinner stood in the doorway, dressed for work. The look on his face reminded Krycek what a tenuous position he was in; he hadn't even picked the cuffs. 

Skinner set a glass of orange juice and a bagel beside him.  "I thought about tossing you over the side," he said.  "Just remember that I didn't."

"Duly noted." 

Skinner frowned, but turned and left without comment.  The lock clicked behind him.  Krycek shifted, grimacing at a stab of pain from his pounded stomach.  God, but he hoped the two of them hadn't ruptured something.  He refused to die of something so banal.

He pushed on his teeth with his tongue until he was satisfied that none of them were loose.  Then he ate the bagel.  It was surprisingly good.

The thin man held him in his arms, nibbling painfully at Krycek's scalp. 

"That hurts."

"I know."

Krycek jerked awake again.  Shit.  How had he fallen asleep like that?  And those fucked-up dreams.  What time was it?

There was someone in the apartment and it wasn't Skinner.  He kicked the glass and plate off the balcony and climbed over the railing. 

This was not Krycek's day to die.  So when the intruder looked over the railing, Krycek pulled him off.  Easy.

Then he found that he couldn't quite get back up, not without breaking his wrist; so he dangled.

Shit.

* * *

_Combined with water, lye heats to over two hundred degrees, and as it heats it burns into the back of my hand, and Tyler places his fingers of one hand over my fingers, our hands spread on the lap of my bloodstained pants, and Tyler says to pay attention because this is the greatest moment of my life._

Mulder looked over the balcony.

"Hi."

Mulder frowned.  "I should just leave you there."

Krycek smiled.

Mulder gave him a hand up.

Mulder unlocked the cuffs from the railing and shoved Krycek into the living room.  Krycek really hated Mulder's violent tendencies. He would have walked of his own volition.  Mulder jerked his hand up painfully to take the cuffs off his wrist.  He would have done that voluntarily too. 

He looked at the blood on his wrist and wished he'd fought back. This throwing-the-fight business was for the birds.

"We're going to walk out of here like nothing happened," Mulder said, trying to take control.  "If anybody speaks to us, you say nothing."

"I got no problem. You put me up here, I'm looking forward to seeing you get me out."

Mulder exploded, sliding his hand over Krycek's head and smacking his forehead.  "Stupid-ass haircut!"   He settled for grabbing Krycek's jacket and pulling him close. 

"I got news for you, Mulder. When they find out who's dead on the ground down there, there's going to be no question whose apartment he was pulled out of."

"Who is he?"

"Same guy with the pouch."

"Let's go," Mulder said, tugging Krycek towards the door.

"I say follow the pouch."

Mulder's phone rang and the conversation told Krycek he had won.

* * *

_Tyler and I, we met and drank a lot of beer, and Tyler said, yes, I could move in with him, but I would have to do him a favor._

"I could really use some food, Mulder."  Truthfully, the pain in his stomach dulled hunger, but he was tired of staring at the highway.

Mulder glared at him, but took the next exit anyway.

They parked at a McDonald's somewhere in Pennsylvania.  Mulder left him still handcuffed to the wheel and went inside, defiantly not asking Krycek what he wanted. 

Krycek rattled the cuffs idly.  He could escape if he wanted to. He didn't want to.  Mulder was going to take him right where he needed to be and it was going to be all his idea.

Mulder returned with a couple of bags and two sodas.  He dropped one bag in Krycek's lap and wedged the soda cup between the seat and shift. 

"I hate it when rental cars don't have cup holders," Mulder grumbled. 

"Yeah, I remember," Krycek said. 

Mulder stopped short, briefly electrified.  "Don't fucking remind me, okay?  Just don't!"

Krycek looked at Mulder innocently and opened the bag.  And blinked.

"A Happy Meal?  You got me a Happy Meal?"

"Yeah."  Mulder glowered at the steering wheel.

"A Happy Meal."

"It seemed appropriate."

"This is great," Krycek said, a grin spreading across his face. "I've never had one before." 

"Really?"

"My parents didn't believe in that stuff."

"They didn't believe in Happy Meals?"

"They didn't believe in toys."  Krycek investigated the contents of the box a little awkwardly.  "'Help the Fry Kids find their way through Ronald's house!'  Does that seem cannibalistic to you?"

"How can you not believe in toys?"

Krycek looked up and shrugged.  He hadn't meant to tell Mulder that.  Mulder was sure to see it as the key to his underlying need for whatever and try to psychoanalyze him.  "We didn't have a lot of money, so my parents got food instead.  Priorities."

Sure enough, Mulder had that furrowing brow that meant he was dissecting Krycek to his component parts.  Krycek looked into the bag again, poking around until he found the plastic-wrapped toy. 

"Hot Wheels!"  He tore open the bag with his teeth and dropped the tiny car into his hand.  "The Batmobile.  First class all the way, Mulder."  He grinned, rolling it back and forth on his palm.

Mulder had that strange, stricken look on his face still.  Krycek dropped the toy car into his lap and went for the cheeseburger, unwrapping it halfway with teeth and fingers.  He chewed slowly and thoroughly, enjoying the plastic-and-grease taste. 

"This explains a lot about you, actually."

Krycek closed his eyes.  "This doesn't explain anything about me," he sighed.

"Sure it does.  You like to play with guns.  Aliens.  Lives."

"Mulder, if you ever thought I was anything more than an errand boy, you are sadly mistaken."  He looked Mulder straight in the eye as he lied.  It wasn't as hard as it used to be.

"Errand boy is a funny word for assassin."

"I'm not an assassin."

"You killed my father easily enough."

Not this again.  "Jesus, Mulder!  Just as we were getting along so well.  I didn't kill your father." 

"I can't prove it but I know it was you."

"You know, it's statements like that which help people discredit you." 

"Fuck you, Krycek!"  Krycek braced, but Mulder didn't hit him this time.  Krycek polished off the cheeseburger and started on the fries, eyeing Mulder warily. 

Mulder looked up at the ceiling, then out the window, then down at the unopened bag in his lap.  Then at Krycek's left hand, resting almost in Mulder's lap.  Then at Krycek's face.

"I am strongly tempted to pull over on some deserted road and beat the truth out of you," Mulder said.  A fascinating blush rose in his cheeks as he spoke.

Krycek took a pull from the soda.  "You can try if you want. But you'll learn a lot more with a good incentive system."

"Incentives?  Like what?"

"Happy Meals are a start."  Krycek finished his fries.

"I knew toys figured into it somewhere," Mulder muttered.

"You don't know shit, Mulder," Krycek said, and this time he was telling the absolute truth.

* * *

_This is how Buddhist temples have tested applicants going back for bah-zillion years, Tyler says.  You tell the applicant to go away, and if his resolve is so strong that he waits at the entrance without food or shelter or encouragement for three days, then and only then can he enter and begin training._

Krycek sat, still chained to the steering wheel, in the long-term parking at JFK International Airport.  He watched Mulder exit the car with a sick feeling in his stomach.  "Mulder, you're not --"

"I'm leaving the window rolled down. If I'm not back in a week I'll call Agent Scully to come bring you a bowl of water."

And, Jesus, he had to panic then, because how had he known?  How had he known about the terrible thirst that had him licking condensation from the silo walls as they left him, covered in oil and fear-sweat, rotting in the dark--"Mulder! You're not gonna leave me here!"

Krycek didn't even know what he screamed, just that Mulder finally--finally!--turned around.  "What did you say to me?"

"What?"  He panted for breath, but calmed, because if he could get Mulder's attention, Mulder wouldn't let him rot, that's the way he was.

"You called me a bad name."

Krycek cursed him out in Russian, knowing this was his chance. Knowing where Mulder was going.  Take the bait, asshole.  Take me to Tunguska Research Station.

"You speak Russian, Krycek?" Mulder asked with a smile.  Bless his predictable heart.

* * *

_I ask, am I anywhere near hitting bottom?_

 

_"Where you're at, now," Tyler says, "you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like."_

The plane ride was quiet.  Krycek was tired of being smacked around and could never sleep on planes, so he read his book and watched Mulder under his lashes as he dozed fitfully. 

He was pleased that the book had survived the drama of the past few days.  With his bookmark intact, no less.

They stopped in Germany and changed planes smoothly in Moscow.  Aeroflot took them to Vladivostok and finally they caught a train north to Tunguska.

Krycek leaned his cheek against the cold glass, watching the trees flash past.  He felt almost homesick.  His grandparents still lived here in a dacha near Moscow.  He'd visited them twice: once as a child of ten, once as a man of twenty.  He'd helped his grandfather fix the roof and slept with two village girls and a younger boy who was some kind of cousin. 

Halcyon days when he was green with youth.  Before he'd ever had to kill anyone. 

Mulder was giving him that look again.

Krycek turned away, sore and irritated.

* * *

_Without just one nest_

 

_A bird can call the world home_

 

_Life is your career_

Krycek tucked his hands up into his jacket collar against his neck.  He had scars on three toes from frostbite.  He wasn't risking his hands. 

Didn't Mulder feel the cold?  Krycek was numb in the open truck. But Mulder wasn't even shivering. 

He wondered if Mulder was warm like the thin man in his dreams. If Mulder's touch would send lightning through him, or if they would mutually annihilate like matter and anti-matter.  He prodded Mulder lightly with his boot to see. 

Mulder frowned as he stared at the road, but otherwise nothing happened. No Wagner score.  Krycek was a little disappointed. 

The truck stopped and they hopped down.  "Where to?" he asked the driver. 

"Through the forest, about five kilometers," the driver said. Krycek passed it on to Mulder, who charged off.

"Thanks," he told the driver, and followed Mulder. 

It was harder than he expected to keep Mulder going in the right direction. He supposed Scully did this all the time, which increased his already healthy respect for the woman.

Mulder was becoming suspicious by the time they reached the razor wire fence, so Krycek put on a show of confusion as they dug underneath it. "You're really gonna keep me in the dark, aren't you?  What are we doing here, Mulder?"

So Mulder told him about the meteorite and the Tungus tribesmen and his full expectation that he would find all the answers he ever wanted wrapped in a tidy bow just inside the perimeter.  As Mulder slipped underneath the fence, still chattering, Krycek wondered if he was really that naive or just pretended to be to throw people off guard.

The forest was vast and silently appealing.  All he had to do was walk away and nobody would ever know he was gone.  He closed his eyes, thinking of bark tents and snow-topped pine trees and wolf packs howling beneath the winter moon, and for a moment the last shreds of romanticism in his soul sang out.

Then he opened his eyes and looked at the lunatic running down the slope before him, and decided this path still had its own charms.  Krycek took a deep breath and wriggled under the fence.

* * *

_"Tell him," Tyler whispered.  "Yes, you did it.  You blew it all up.  That's what he wants to hear."_

Krycek disliked horses. 

"Would you care to tell me what you were doing in our compound... comrade?"

"We weren't doing anything, I swear."

It wasn't a rational dislike, more that horses were associated with a number of people he didn't like at all.

"Why were you in the compound, if not to spy?"

"We were lost!"

For example, he didn't like the men questioning him even a bit, and they had run him down with horses.

"If you don't talk now, I assure you, you will talk later."

"I can't talk if I don't know anything!"

Next time he saw a man on a horse, he was going to shoot the horse as well. 

* * *

_Tyler's words coming out of my mouth._

 

_And I used to be such a nice person._

The panic was rising as the guard marched him through corridor after windowless corridor.  It was too familiar, too much like watching from the inside as the alien marched him through the deserted silo in search of its haven. 

But Mulder was there when the guard shoved him into the cell. The sudden sharp relief of not being alone triggered the panic and he threw himself frantically against the door.

"We've got to get out of here. They're going to torture us."  Thank God, there was a window.  He crossed the cell and clung to the bars, breathing the frigid outside air.

"How do you know?"

"They were questioning me."  The panic was subsiding now, letting him think rationally.  He realized he couldn't let Mulder know about this new phobia.  He moved away from the window and stood nose to nose with Mulder.  "Trying to get me to confess."

"To what?"

"To being a spy."  He knew Mulder couldn't let that one go. Mulder pinned him to the wall right on schedule.

"What did you tell them?"

"That we were stupid Americans lost in the woods."  He locked eyes with Mulder.   "Mulder, you're going to need me in here."

This was his chance to change the balance of power.  He pushed Mulder down.

"Don't touch me again."

* * *

_For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans.  And account for every drop of used motor oil._

Krycek claimed the single blanket, since they'd taken his jacket. And his book.  He would have to find another copy when he got back to the States, because he really wanted to know how it ended. 

He tried hard to dream of supermodels, but opened his eyes in the clearing, locked in the thin man's iron embrace.

"This is Siberia.  I was dreaming of Siberia the whole time?"

"No."

"Then what am I dreaming of?"

"Me."

"That seems too simple."

"Sometimes things are simple."

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?"

"That too."  The thin man rocked softly from side to side. His body burned like fire.  Krycek folded his numb fingers into the thin man's grasp.

The thin man rubbed his cheek against Krycek's.  He flicked his tongue into the corner of Krycek's eye. 

"What do you want?"

"You have such pretty eyes," the thin man murmured.

"You want to fuck me?"

"No," the thin man said, and turned Krycek's face toward him, licking at his closed eye.  Krycek shivered and woke up still shivering. It was perhaps 9AM, which meant darkness still this far north.

His teeth chattered.  He stared at Mulder, peacefully curled on the other side of the cell.  Krycek rolled stealthily to his feet and crept over to Mulder's side. 

"Eye-sucking mutants," he whispered.  "Tiny fish in your organs. Small exploding children."

He then sat back and watched, shivering in his blanket.  Eventually, Mulder's brow creased and he twitched.  Chasing mutants, isn't that cute. 

Krycek grinned.  "That's for the haircut crack, Mulder," he whispered.

Mulder's hands roamed and he mumbled in his sleep.  Suddenly he grabbed Krycek's calf and hauled himself toward the other man, pressing his forehead to Krycek's shin as his arm embraced Krycek's folded leg. His mumbles stopped and his breathing evened into deep sleep again.

Krycek couldn't believe it.  Special Agent Fox Mulder was holding his leg like a teddy bear.  Was--caressing him, almost.  Was comforting himself with Krycek's body.  Bozhe moy.

You could call this a fantasy of his.  One that kept him going through a couple of rough nights over the years.  Mulder, himself, a nice quiet room for an indefinite period of time.  Granted the actual activities had shifted a bit from time to time.

Now here they were.  Locked into a cell, no less, where the inmates couldn't hear and the guards didn't care and Mulder was _nuzzling_ his leg, for Pete's sake. 

Fate was a cruel bitch sometimes, Krycek thought as he shivered.  He was so tired he couldn't imagine anything more strenuous than sleep, and even that was denied by his fucked up dreams. 

Krycek pried Mulder's hot hand off his leg and backed up, pulling his legs up toward his chest.  Fucking Mulder.  Always the contrarian. 

The cell lightened in the pre-dawn.  Mulder twitched and awoke violently.  "Jesus!" 

"Bad dreams, Mulder?"

"Uh, yeah, mostly... how did you know?"  He shook his head and glared at Krycek.

"You were twitching like a dog after a rabbit."  Krycek couldn't help smiling.

"Oh."  He rubbed his hair.  "Has anyone come in?" 

"No." 

That was the extent of their conversation.  Sometime after full dawn, the guard shoved soup under the door.  Floury water with a bit of potato and salt, but better than nothing.  Krycek drank deeply and Mulder followed--but then stopped and spit it out.  He held up an enormous, wriggling cockroach.

It was live, not cooked into the soup.  The guard did it. That was a bad sign. 

Krycek threw his dish back through the slot, trying to catch the attention of the guard.  He was sick of being cold and sick of taking crap. It was time to give some back.

The guard bustled back in and grabbed Krycek. 

"I want to see your supervisor." 

"Why would my supervisor want to see you?"

"He'll want to see me."  Forget aces.  Krycek had a whole deck up his sleeve.

"I don't know," the guard said.  "I don't know."

"What are you saying?" Mulder broke in.

Krycek looked at him.  "That I want to see his supervisor."

"Okay," the guard continued, "but if he doesn't want to see you, you'll be accountable."

"I'll be accountable,"  Krycek assured him, and the guard led him out.  "Do svidaniye," he said to Mulder.  Until I see you next.

The guard took him to a man he recognized as the head researcher and administrator. 

"Ready to confess?" the man asked.

"You're nearly out of blood, aren't you?"  Krycek took the offensive.

"What?"

"You're nearly out of the source blood."  Krycek smiled. "Your methods are effective, but crude; you're nearly out of the original blood you make the vaccine from."

The researcher sat down, beckoning Krycek into the chair across from him.  "Who are you?  Who are you working for?"

"I'm the blood donor," Krycek said.  "I'm working for myself. The other man is an American foxhound; I was following him to see where he led me.  Imagine my surprise when he took me here."

"How interesting.  What do you want, comrade blood donor?"

"I have a certain interest in seeing you succeed," Krycek said. More specifically, he had a certain interest in seeing the Consortium fail. After the alien vacated his body, they left him in the silo for days without food or water.  He was licking mud puddles from the floor and dew from the walls by the time they came back.  And it was just to soften him up so that he didn't kill anyone when they took him back to the lab. 

Krycek had overheard one of the doctors saying that they very likely could spin a vaccine out of the antibodies in his blood.  Not long afterwards he managed to kill a guard and slip out.  He took that information straight to his contacts in the old KGB. 

"I'll trade you another sample of the blood in my veins for safe passage for me and my friend back to the States."

The researcher cocked his head.  "But comrade blood donor, if you are here, we have an ample supply of blood to tap."

Krycek returned his gaze evenly.  "I have friends at home who would miss me.  Greatly."

"And these friends have friends who can tell them where you are.  I see.  I accept your deal."

"And."

"And?"

"If you will give my companion a dose of your vaccine sufficient to protect him from the black oil as well as the black cancer, then I will take certain... measures to inhibit the American tests that are now taking place."

The researcher's eyes narrowed.  "So they are developing their own vaccine." 

"Not one as good as yours, not yet, but they have certain resources that you do not, just as you have certain resources they do not. I can remove those resources."

"The deal is unbalanced.  You want something more."

Krycek shrugged.  "As I said, I have a certain interest in seeing that your side succeeds."  Because any slap to the face of the American consortium brightened his day.

"I accept your deal." 

* * *

_The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep._

 

_I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash.  I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life.  I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't see any way to change things. _

 

_Only end them._

Krycek curled up in a chair in the researcher's room.  They had given him a change of clothes, wash and a shave.  Sunlight striped across his shoulders; he was finally warm.  He drifted peacefully between sleep and wakefulness.

The door opened and Krycek straightened up immediately.

"Your friend has been given the vaccine," the researcher said. "We are administering the black cancer to activate it now, if you care to watch."

"Yes, I would."

Krycek looked down on the testing room, trying to decide if stone slabs and chicken wire were more or less horrifying than sterilized labs and padded Velcro restraints. 

Maybe less.  There was something comforting about medieval equipment. It meant they probably didn't have microchips and nanobots and mind-controlling chemicals he couldn't even pronounce.  Even if they did terrible things to your body, it was still your own.

He could see Mulder wriggling slightly under the mesh.  Mulder was never one to give in and accept the inevitable. 

The subjects at the far end suddenly arched and writhed.  The clicks of the controls in the booth drowned out the sounds of the hosts as the black cancer invaded their bodies. 

When it was Mulder's turn he didn't even open his mouth.  He always was stoic about their experiments, ever since he was a kid.  He did Bill Mulder proud.

The virus crawled around in the patients' bodies for a little over an hour before it was rejected.  The vaccine worked. 

"We are refining the vaccine so that the rejection proceeds more rapidly and leaves the host in better shape," the head researcher said.  "As it is, the process breaks down the host's body gradually, until the heart stops as the virus leaves."

Krycek nodded.  He watched the virus drip from Mulder's eyes and0 felt faintly jealous.  The oil didn't leave the host nearly so graciously. 

"How well will the vaccine protect against the oil?" he asked.

"We can't be sure, since we don't have a sample of the oil.  But at the least, it should make the host a hostile environment, so that implantation isn't so easy.  And with the dosage we gave your friend we think he should be protected in full."

"Good."  He turned.  "I just need a phone to uphold my end of the bargain."  Time to rouse Peskov out of retirement.

Sleep it off, Mulder, he thought.  I'll tell you what happened in the morning.

* * *

_Under and behind and inside everything I took for granted, something horrible has been growing. _

 

_Everything has fallen apart._

Krycek stood on the loading platform smoking incredibly foul Russian cigarettes with the head researcher, waiting to pull Mulder out of the line of prisoners.  Time to go home.  Mulder wouldn't have any of his answers, but that was hardly a surprise.

"Now we collect your friend and our deal is done."

"Pleasure doing business with you," Krycek said, grinning.

He heard the cries of the prisoners and turned just in time to see Mulder barreling at him.  Mulder tackled him backwards into the truck and punched him twice in his already sore cheek.  He lolled, dazed, staring at the sky. 

("It's all going to hell," the thin man whispered in his ear, wrapping ticker tape around his throat.  "There's nothing to trust in any more.")

He collected himself, staring up at the trees as the truck hurtled past. Fucking hell.  He pushed to his knees shakily and looked in the window to the truck cab. 

Fucking Mulder.  He punched the wire, furious.  Fucking impatient idiot Mulder!  His plan would have gotten them back scot-free. Asses covered, everyone's interest served.  He might even have told Mulder what was in the rock.  Just a little bit of faith and they would be on the train back to Vladivostok by now.

"Yob tvoyu mat'!" he shouted.

Mulder didn't even twitch.  The truck was out of control; not even Mulder drove this badly, so he bet the brakes were out.  Time to cut his losses and leave. 

Fuck you Mulder, fuck you Mulder, fuck you Mulder, his mind chanted as he moved to the end of the truck and carefully rolled off.  He landed painfully on his right shoulder, bouncing into the brush at the side of the road. 

* * *

_The barrel of the gun tucked into my surviving cheek, I say, Tyler, you mixed the nitro with paraffin, didn't you. _

 

_Paraffin never works._

 

_I have to do this... _

 

_And I pull the trigger._

His jaw hurt.  His stomach hurt.  His arm hurt.  Fucking Mulder, fucking aliens, fucking vaccine, fuck himself for forgetting the first rule of self-preservation: never put faith in anything but your hands and your head.

But he was in the woods, and he wasn't being chased, and he knew what to do in the woods, but he was so cold.  So cold.  Cold, and certain parts of his body were definitely not working properly, and he desperately wanted to be warm again. 

He even thought for a moment about sleep and the dreams of warmth it would bring, but he knew that if he went to sleep now he wouldn't wake up again.

And he was not going to lay down and die.  Not after the black oil.  The car bomb.  Skinner's balcony.  Fucking Mulder. He wasn't going to make it easy, so he ran; and when he glimpsed people in the forest around him, he ran more.

His feet pounded through the forest desperately, his breath pluming before him.  But this time it wasn't a dream, and eventually he had to collapse.

And then he was surrounded by one-armed men, and he couldn't run anymore; he was worn down to nothing.  So he told them a good story instead and, to his relief, they took him in.

Fucking Mulder.  He had handed Mulder the perfect setup, but the impatient bastard botched it.  He was on his own now.

They both were.

* * *

_The bullet out of Tyler's gun, it tore out my other cheek to give me a jagged smile from ear to ear.  Yeah, just like an angry Halloween pumpkin.  Japanese demon.  Dragon of Avarice._

Krycek curled around the fire, close as he dared.  His back was still cold, but the killing chill in the rest of his body was easing, leaving only the bone-weariness behind.

He looked up.  He was stuck on his knees with the thin man looming impossibly tall over him.  "I'm too tired to fight."

"I know."

"Can you warm me up?"

"I can fix it so you never feel the cold again."

"How?"

"You feel the cold because your heart tells you to.  You feel the pain because your soul does.  I can take it all away.  Everything. And I just want two little things in return."  Fingertips skated across his face, playing about his cheekbones, his lips, the soft line of his jaw. 

"Fine.  Just do it."  Krycek closed his eyes and the thin man knelt and embraced him.  Warmth flowed through him, soothing, comforting, relaxing him into the cradling arms.

"Seduction always leads to betrayal, comrade," the thin man said, and kissed his cheek.  Then he pried open Krycek's eyelids. 

He was frozen, in that horrifying heavy way that only happens in dreams, wanting to struggle but melted into the ground.  And he saw the thin man's face unbarred by the sunglasses, he saw the even white teeth that lined his eye sockets, and he saw the red all-purpose Swiss Army Knife approach his eye.

And when the optic nerve was severed he saw all manner of beautiful things.  Just for a moment.

And with his one remaining eye he saw the thin man slip the white sphere into a gaping empty socket-mouth so they stared at one another each with one dilated green eye. 

And the thin man grinned in triplicate and reached for his face again, biting down on the eye with his tiny teeth.

And Krycek woke up, heart pounding, gasping lungfuls of cold midnight air.  He blinked _both_ his gloriously intact eyes into the fire and turned over--

\--turned over to find himself seized by half a dozen unpaired hands and pinned to the ground, and this was real.  This was really real. And there was nowhere to run, not now.

And the young man with the solemn face bent over him with the red-hot knife, and as the knife seared into his skin he wasn't cold at all, he was hot all over; and as he screamed at the quiet pine trees, he thought about the thin man, and he thought about Mulder, and they collapsed into each other in a flash of white teeth and betrayal.

_Whispers: _

 

_"We're going to break up civilization so we can make something betterout of the world."_

 

_Whispers:_

 

_"We look forward to getting you back."_

end.


End file.
